Tony Benn

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn (3 April 1925-14 March 2014) was a British Labor Party politicial who served as an MP for 47 years between the 1950 and 2001 general elections and served as a cabinet minister during the 1960s and 1970s.

Biography
Tony Benn was born in London, England in 1925 and was educated at Westminster and Oxford. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1946, and he entered Parliament in 1950 as a Labor Party MP for Bristol South-East. He became close to the Labor Party intellectual Anthony Crosland, who belonged to the party's right wing. Benn he inherited his father's viscountcy in 1960, forcing him to resign from the House of Commons. In 1963, he renounced his title and returned to the Commons, and he served as Postmaster-General from 1964 to 1966 and Minister of Technology from 1966 to 1970, serving under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. When Labor returned to power in 1974, he held the portfolios of Industry Minister from 1974 to 1975 and Minister of Energy from 1975 to 1979, and his experience of these posts made him move to the left of the party, believing that civil servants were running the country instead of elected ministers. He entered the opposition in 1979, and he emerged as the leading left-winger in his country, supporting nationalization, British withdrawal from the European Union, and unilateral nuclear disarmament. His influence declined from 1983 after Neil Kinnock was elected as party leader, and he remained a prominent figure due to his undoubted integrity, his debating skills, and his popularity among the grassroots. From 2001 to 2014, he was President of the Stop the War Coalition, and he died in 2014 at the age of 88.